Part 2

In my own experience, then, among two different peoples, I have been able to establish a definite correlation between the presence of a term of relationship and special functions associated with the relationship. Information kindly given to me by Father Egidi, however, seems to show that the correlation among the Melanesians is not complete. In Mekeo, the mother’s brother has the duty of putting on the first perineal garment of his nephew, but he has no special term and is classed with the father. Among the Kuni, on the other hand, there is a definite term for the mother’s brother distinguishing him from the father, but yet he has not, so far as Father Egidi knows, any special functions.

Both in Melanesia and Polynesia a similar correlation comes out in connection with other relationships, the most prominent exception being the absence of a special term for the father’s sister in the Banks Islands, although this relative has very definite and important functions. In these islands the father’s sister is classed with the mother as _vev_ or _veve_, but even here, where the generalisation seems to break down, it does not do so completely, for the father’s sister is distinguished from the mother as _veve vus rawe_, the mother who kills a pig, as opposed to the simple _veve_ used for the mother and her sisters.

There is thus definite evidence, not only for the association of classificatory terms of relationship with special social functions, but from one part of the world we now have evidence which shows that the presence or absence of special terms is largely dependent on whether there are or are not such functions. We may take it as established that the terms of the classificatory system are not, as McLennan supposed, merely terms of address and modes of mutual salutation. McLennan came to this conclusion because he believed that the classificatory terms were associated with no such functions as those of which we now have abundant evidence. He asks, “What duties or rights are affected by the relationships comprised in the classificatory system?” and answers himself according to the knowledge at his disposal, “Absolutely none.”[7] This passage makes it clear that, if McLennan had known what we know to-day, he would never have taken up the line of attack upon Morgan’s position in which he has had, and still has, so many followers.

[7] _Op. cit._, p. 366.

* * * * *

I can now turn to the second line of attack, that which boldly discards the origin of the terminology of relationship in social conditions, and seeks for its explanation in psychology. The line of argument I propose to follow is first to show that many details of classificatory systems have been directly determined by social factors. If that task can be accomplished, we shall have firm ground from which to take off in the attempt to refer the general characters of the classificatory and other systems of relationship to forms of social organisation. Any complete theory of a social institution has not only to account for its general characters, but also for its details, and I propose to begin with the details.

I must first return to the history of the subject, and stay for a moment to ask why the line of argument I propose to follow was not adopted by Morgan and has been so largely disregarded by others.

Whenever a new phenomenon is discovered in any part of the world, there is a natural tendency to seek for its parallels elsewhere. Morgan lived at a time when the unity of human culture was a topic which greatly excited ethnologists, and it is evident that one of his chief interests in the new discovery arose from the possibility it seemed to open of showing the uniformity of human culture. He hoped to demonstrate the uniformity of the classificatory system throughout the world, and he was content to observe certain broad varieties of the system and refer them to supposed stages in the history of human society. He paid but little attention to such varieties of the classificatory system as are illustrated in his own record of North American systems, and seems to have overlooked entirely certain features of the Indian and Oceanic systems he recorded, which might have enabled him to demonstrate the close relation between the terminology of relationship and social institutions. Morgan’s neglect to attend to these differences must be ascribed in some measure to the ignorance of rude forms of social organisation which existed when he wrote, but the failure of others to recognise the dependence of the details of classificatory systems upon social institutions is rather to be ascribed to the absence of interest in the subject induced by their adherence to McLennan’s primary error. Those who believe that the classificatory system is merely an unimportant code of mutual salutations are not likely to attend to relatively minute differences in the customs they despise. The credit of having been the first fully to recognise the social importance of these differences belongs to J. Kohler. In his book “Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe,” which I have already mentioned, he studied minutely the details of many different systems, and showed that they could be explained by certain forms of marriage practised by those who use the terms. I propose now to deal with classificatory terminology from this point of view. My procedure will be first to show that the details which distinguish different forms of the classificatory system from one another have been directly determined by the social institutions of those who use the systems, and only when this has been established, shall I attempt to bring the more general characters of the classificatory and other systems into relation with social institutions.

I am able to carry out this task more fully than has hitherto been possible because I have collected in Melanesia a number of systems of relationship which differ far more widely from one another than those recorded in Morgan’s book or others which have been collected since. Some of the features which characterise these Melanesian systems will be wholly new to ethnologists, not having yet been recorded elsewhere, but I propose to begin with a long familiar mode of terminology which accompanies that widely distributed custom known as the cross-cousin marriage. In the more frequent form of this marriage a man marries the daughter either of his mother’s brother or of his father’s sister; more rarely his choice is limited to one of these relatives.

Such a marriage will have certain definite consequences. Let us take a case in which a man marries the daughter of his mother’s brother, as is represented in the following diagram:

[8] In this and other diagrams capital letters are used to represent men and the smaller letters women.

+----------------------------+ | | B = a A = b | | | +----------+----------+ | | | | C =================== d E f ]

One consequence of the marriage between _C_ and _d_ will be that _A_, who before the marriage of _C_ was only his mother’s brother, now becomes also his wife’s father, while _b_, who before the marriage was the mother’s brother’s wife of _C_, now becomes his wife’s mother. Reciprocally, _C_, who before his marriage had been the sister’s son of _A_ and the husband’s sister’s son of _b_, now becomes their son-in-law. Further, _E_ and _f_, the other children of _A_ and _b_, who before the marriage had been only the cousins of _C_, now become his wife’s brother and sister.

Similarly, _a_, who before the marriage of _d_ was her father’s sister, now becomes also her husband’s mother, and _B_, her father’s sister’s husband, comes to stand in the relation of husband’s father; if _C_ should have any brothers and sisters, these cousins now become her brothers- and sisters-in-law.

The combinations of relationship which follow from the marriage of a man with the daughter of his mother’s brother thus differ for a man and a woman, but if, as is usual, a man may marry the daughter either of his mother’s brother or of his father’s sister, these combinations of relationship will hold good for both men and women.

Another and more remote consequence of the cross-cousin marriage, if this become an established institution, is that the relationships of mother’s brother and father’s sister’s husband will come to be combined in one and the same person, and that there will be a similar combination of the relationships of father’s sister and mother’s brother’s wife. If the cross-cousin marriage be the habitual custom, _B_ and _b_ in Diagram 1 will be brother and sister; in consequence _A_ will be at once the mother’s brother and the father’s sister’s husband of _C_, while _b_ will be both his father’s sister and his mother’s brother’s wife. Since, however, the mother’s brother is also the father-in-law, and the father’s sister the mother-in-law, three different relationships will be combined in each case. Through the cross-cousin marriage the relationships of mother’s brother, father’s sister’s husband and father-in-law will be combined in one and the same person, and the relationships of father’s sister, mother’s brother’s wife and mother-in-law will be similarly combined.

In many places where we know the cross-cousin marriage to be an established institution, we find just those common designations which I have just described. Thus, in the Mbau dialect of Fiji the word _vungo_ is applied to the mother’s brother, the husband of the father’s sister and the father-in-law. The word _nganei_ is used for the father’s sister, the mother’s brother’s wife and the mother-in-law. The term _tavale_ is used by a man for the son of the mother’s brother or of the father’s sister as well as for the wife’s brother and the sister’s husband. _Ndavola_ is used not only for the child of the mother’s brother or father’s sister when differing in sex from the speaker, but this word is also used by a man for his wife’s sister and his brother’s wife, and by a woman for her husband’s brother and her sister’s husband. Every one of these details of the Mbau system is the direct and inevitable consequence of the cross-cousin marriage, if it become an established and habitual practice.

This Fijian system does not stand alone in Melanesia. In the southern islands of the New Hebrides, in Tanna, Eromanga, Anaiteum and Aniwa, the cross-cousin marriage is practised and their systems of relationship have features similar to those of Fiji. Thus, in Anaiteum the word _matak_ applies to the mother’s brother, the father’s sister’s husband and the father-in-law, while the word _engak_ used for the cross-cousin is not only used for the wife’s sister and the brother’s wife, but also for the wife herself.

Again, in the island of Guadalcanar in the Solomons the system of relationship is just such as would result from the cross-cousin marriage. One term, _nia_, is used for the mother’s brother and the wife’s father, and probably also for the father’s sister’s husband and the husband’s father, though my stay in the island was not long enough to enable me to collect sufficient genealogical material to demonstrate these points completely. Similarly, _tarunga_ includes in its connotation the father’s sister, the mother’s brother’s wife and the wife’s mother, and probably also the husband’s mother, while the word _iva_ is used for both cross-cousins and brothers- and sisters-in-law. Corresponding to this terminology there seemed to be no doubt that it was the custom for a man to marry the daughter of his mother’s brother or his father’s sister, though I was not able to demonstrate this form of marriage genealogically.

These three regions, Fiji, the southern New Hebrides and Guadalcanar, are the only parts of Melanesia included in my survey where I found the practice of the cross-cousin marriage, and in all three regions the systems of relationship are just such as would follow from this form of marriage.

Let us now turn to inquire how far it is possible to explain these features of Melanesian systems of relationship by psychological similarity. If it were not for the cross-cousin marriage, what can there be to give the mother’s brother a greater psychological similarity to the father-in-law than the father’s brother, or the father’s sister a greater similarity to the mother-in-law than the mother’s sister? Why should it be two special kinds of cousin who are classed with two special kinds of brother- and sister-in-law or with the husband or wife? Once granted the presence of the cross-cousin marriage, and there are psychological similarities certainly, though even here the matter is not quite straightforward from the point of view of the believer in their importance, for we have to do not merely with the similarity of two relatives, but with their identity, with the combination of two or more relationships in one and the same person. Even if we put this on one side, however, it remains to ask how it is possible to say that terms of relationship do not reflect sociology, if such psychological similarities are themselves the result of the cross-cousin marriage? What point is there in bringing in hypothetical psychological similarities which are only at the best intermediate links in the chain of causation connecting the terminology of relationship with antecedent social conditions?

If you concede the causal relation between the characteristic features of a Fijian or Anaiteum or Guadalcanar system and the cross-cousin marriage, there can be no question that it is the cross-cousin marriage which is the antecedent and the features of the system of relationship the consequences. I do not suppose that, even in this subject, there will be found anyone to claim that the Fijians took to marrying their cross-cousins because such a marriage was suggested to them by the nature of their system of relationship. We have to do in this case, not merely with one or two features which might be the consequence of the cross-cousin marriage, but with a large and complicated meshwork of resemblances and differences in the nomenclature of relationship, each and every element of which follows directly from such a marriage, while no one of the systems I have considered possesses a single feature which is not compatible with social conditions arising out of this marriage. Apart from quantitative verification, I doubt whether it would be possible in the whole range of science to find a case where we can be more confident that one phenomenon has been conditioned by another. I feel almost guilty of wasting your time by going into it so fully, and should hardly have ventured to do so if this case of social causation had not been explicitly denied by one with so high a reputation as Professor Kroeber. I hope, however, that the argument will be useful as an example of the method I shall apply to other cases in which the evidence is less conclusive.

The features of terminology which follow from the cross-cousin marriage were known to Morgan, being present in three of the systems he recorded from Southern India and in the Fijian system collected for him by Mr. Fison. The earliest reference[9] to the cross-cousin marriage which I have been able to discover is among the Gonds of Central India. This marriage was recorded in 1870, which, though earlier than the appearance of Morgan’s book, was after it had been accepted for publication, so that I think we can be confident that Morgan was unacquainted with the form of marriage which would have explained the peculiar features of the Indian and Fijian systems. It is evident, however, that Morgan was so absorbed in his demonstration of the similarity of these systems to those of America that he paid but little, if any, attention to their peculiarities. He thus lost a great opportunity; if he had attended to these peculiarities and had seen their meaning, he might have predicted a form of marriage which would soon afterwards have been independently discovered. Such an example of successful prediction would have forced the social significance of the terminology of relationship upon the attention of students in such a way that we should have been spared much of the controversy which has so long obstructed progress in this branch of sociology. It must at the very least have acted as a stimulus to the collection of systems of relationship. It would hardly have been possible that now, more than forty years after the appearance of Morgan’s book, we are still in complete ignorance of the terminology of relationship of many peoples about whom volumes have been written. It would seem impossible, for instance, that our knowledge of Indian systems of relationship could have been what it is to-day. India would have been the country in which the success of Morgan’s prediction would first have shown itself, and such an event must have prevented the almost total neglect which the subject of relationship has suffered at the hands of students of Indian sociology.

[9] Grant, _Gazetteer of Central Provinces_, Nagpur, 2nd ed., 1870, p. 276.

LECTURE II

In my last lecture I began the demonstration of the dependence of the classificatory terminology of relationship upon social institutions by showing how a number of terms used in several parts of Melanesia have been determined by the cross-cousin marriage. I showed that in places where the cross-cousin marriage is practised there are not merely one or two, but large groups of, terms of relationship which are exactly such as would follow from this form of marriage. To-day I begin by considering other forms of Melanesian marriage which bring out almost as clearly and conclusively the dependence of the classificatory terminology upon social conditions.

The systems of relationship of the Banks Islands possess certain very remarkable features which were first recorded by Dr. Codrington.[10] Put very shortly, it may be stated that cross-cousins stand to one another in the relation of parent and child, or, more exactly, cross-cousins apply to one another terms of relationship which are otherwise used between parents and children. A man applies to his mother’s brother’s children the term which he otherwise uses for his own children, and, conversely, a person applies to his father’s sister’s son a term he otherwise uses for his father. Thus, in the following diagram, _C_ will apply to _D_ and _e_ the terms which are in general use for a son and daughter, while _D_ and _e_ will apply to _C_ the term they otherwise use for their father.

[10] _The Melanesians_, p. 38.

In most forms of the classificatory system members of different generations are denoted in wholly different ways and belong to different classes,[11] but here we have a case in which persons of the same generation as the speaker are classed with those of an older or a younger generation.

[11] I leave out of account here those cases in which members of different generations are denoted by a reciprocal term.

I will first ask you to consider to what kind of psychological similarity such a practice can be due. What kind of psychological similarity can there be between one special kind of cousin and the father, and between another special kind of cousin and a son or daughter? If the puzzle as put in this form does not seem capable of a satisfactory answer, let us turn to see if the Banks Islanders practise any social custom to which this peculiar terminology can have been due. In the story of Ganviviris told to Dr. Codrington in these islands[12] an incident occurs in which a man hands over one of his wives to his sister’s son, or, in other words, in which a man marries one of the wives of his mother’s brother. Inquiries showed, not only that this form of marriage was once widely current in the islands, but that it still persists though in a modified form. The Christianity of the natives does not now permit a man to have superfluous wives whom he can pass on to his sister’s sons, but it is still the orthodox, and indeed I was told the popular, custom to marry the widow of the mother’s brother. It seemed that in the old days a man would take the widow of his mother’s brother in addition to any wife or wives he might already have. Though this is no longer allowed, the leaning towards this form of marriage is so strong that after fifty years of external influence a young man still marries the widow of his mother’s brother, sometimes in preference to a girl of his own age. Indeed, there was reason to believe that there was an obligation to do so, if the deceased husband had a nephew who was not yet married. The peculiar features of the terminology of relationship in these islands are exactly such as would follow from this form of marriage. If, in Diagram 2, _C_ marries _b_, the wife or widow of his mother’s brother, and thereby comes to occupy the social position of his uncle _A_, the children of the uncle, _D_ and _e_, will come to stand to him in the relation of children, while he, who had previously been the father’s sister’s son of _D_ and _e_, will now become their father. An exceptional form of the classificatory system, in which there is a departure from the usual rule limiting a term of relationship to members of the same generation, is found to be the natural consequence of a social regulation which enjoins the marriage of persons belonging to different generations.

[12] _Op. cit._, p. 384.

The next step in the process of demonstrating the social significance of the classificatory system of relationship will take us to the island of Pentecost in the northern New Hebrides. When I recorded the system of this island, I found it to have so bizarre and complex a character that I could hardly believe at first it could be other than the result of a ludicrous misunderstanding between myself and my seemingly intelligent and trustworthy informants. Nevertheless, the records obtained from two independent witnesses, and based on separate pedigrees, agreed so closely even in the details which seemed most improbable that I felt confident that the whole construction could not be so mad as it seemed. This confidence was strengthened by finding that some of its features were of the same order of peculiarity as others which I had already found in a set of Fijian systems I have yet to consider. There were certain features which brought relatives separated by two generations into one category; the mother’s mother, for instance, received the same designation as the elder sister; the wife’s mother the same as the daughter; the wife’s brother the same as the daughter’s son. The only conclusion I was then able to formulate was that these features were the result of some social institution resembling the matrimonial classes of Australia, which would have the effect of putting persons of alternate generations into one social category.